Computing devices are used for providing a wide variety of applications support to users. As used herein, the term “computing device” refers to any equipment with computational capability or that is integrated with equipment with computational ability. Accordingly, as used herein, computing device can include one or more enterprise, application, personal, pervasive and/or embedded computer systems that perform computational operations and associated input and/or output devices or components thereof. Examples of computing devices, as used herein, include computer workstations, personal digital assistants, cell phones, email pagers, automobile navigation systems, and computer-controlled appliances.
As computing devices and application programs for the same evolve, along with networks interconnecting such devices, the range of customer (user) services that can be provided by computing devices is becoming increasingly complex. As a result, some customers are experiencing problems in assimilating and utilizing these computing device based application services. As a result, despite the range of available services, service functionality is generally self-limited and self-defeating and different types of application services are generally developed separately, often with only an operating system, such as the WINDOWS™ operating system from Microsoft Corporation, in common. While such an operating system may provide an integrated framework allowing application programs to access hardware of a computing device, no integrating framework at an application level is provided, even though technology is becoming available which may be used to enable such a framework (e.g., Web Services and Liberty Alliance using extensible markup language (XML) over Simple Object Access Profile (SOAP) over hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) over Internet protocol (IP)).
Re-usable components for application services programs may include, for example, small pieces like code objects, a few types of standard “servers” such as Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) and, a small number of standard “functions” such as authentication. As a result, such service offerings generally do not build on each other and no model or method may be available to facilitate needed interactions. Even “bundled” services, such as OFFICE™ productivity software available from Microsoft Corporation, are hardly integrated in functionality, even though they may achieve data interchange compatibility. As such, service complexity generally rises too fast for customers/users as features are added, thereby reducing ease-of-use and ultimate value to the user of such application services. In addition, architectural complexity may rise too fast for conceptual designers and developers as features are added, such that increasing errors and development time and cost may result. Furthermore, security is typically piece-meal, separate, incomplete, insufficient and/or too hard to use.
One known functionality provided, for example, by Microsoft OUTLOOK™ e-mail client and calendaring applications, is a calendar. However, while such electronic calendars are known, they are generally only partially connected to and integrated with other electronic services and networks, and, typically, provide only very limited functionality and convenience to users outside of their narrow scope of use. Electronic calendars, such as OUTLOOK™ , also lack various functionalities provided by human planners or arrangers. However, human planners or arrangers, such as wedding arrangers, are typically costly and unreliable, and are not inherently connected to electronic services and networks.
Another area of interest in the application service providing area is provision of educational services. Continuing education of all sorts is in demand and a variety of such educational services are available piecemeal in a number of forms, but such resources are typically difficult and costly to obtain in a convenient, integrated fashion and these services generally are not configured to anticipate a user's needs and include in a clear manner all related information needs.